Every week I do one or two things to "tweak" my life, so it is more productive, interesting, and fulfilling. I use this Blog to document my progress, and as a forum so you, the reader, can help me grow in this journey!

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

When people see some things as beautifulother things become uglyWhen people see some things as goodother things become bad

Being and non-being create each otherDifficult and easy support each otherLong and short define each otherHigh and low depend on each otherBefore and after follow each other

Therefore the Masteracts without doing anythingand teaches without saying anythingThings arise and she lets them comethings disappear and she lets them goShe has but doesn't possessacts but doesn't expectWhen her work is done, she forgets itThat is why it lasts forever

Sunday, January 18, 2009

What manner of people were these who, like the carp in the Chinese fable that leapt up the waterfall in a mighty thrust to tecome a dragon, could rise to a higher level of consciousness, to a wholly new awareness of the indivisibility of all life and the basic emptiness of all things? Certainly none was gifted with extraordinary intellect, nor were any endowed with supranormal powers. Suffering they had each known, but it was no more than what is experienced in the lifetime of an ordinary person. If they were exceptional in any way it was simply in their courage to "go they knew not where by a road they knew not of," prompted by a faith in their real Self.

The seeker who does not find is still entrapped by his illusion of two worlds: one of perfection that lies beyond, of peace without struggle, of unending joy; the other the everyday meaningless world of pain and evil which is scarcely worth relating himself to. Secretly he longs for the former even as he openly despises the latter. Yet he hesitates to plunge into the teeming Void, into the abyss of his own Primal-nature, because in his deepest unconscious he fears abandoning his familiar world of duality for the unknown world of Oneness, the reality of which he still doubts. The finders, on the other hand, are restrained by neither fears nor doubts. Casting both aside, they leap because they can't do otherwise - they simply must and no longer know why - and so they triumph.

Monday, January 12, 2009

"In an old Sufi story about the wise-fool Mullah Nasrudin, the Mulllah is seen searching for a key under a street lamp. Helpful passersby join in the search but to no avail. They ask the Mullah if he is sure about that he lost the key there. The Mullah replies that he lost it yards away under a tree but since its dark there he thought of looking under the street lamp."

The lesson? People don't want to do real work! Most of us just want to look like we are doing real inner work. Look busy so we feel better about where we are and going. We are trying to "Figure Out" the truth, read it in a book, or receive it from others!

Why? Because the light is brighter there! The work is, therefore, easier!

To find our way, towards enlightenment, we must do it alone, most of the time. It might seem dark initially, but as our eyes adjust, it becomes brighter. Eventually we will see everything. We learn to use our own light, our own language, and our own intelligence. What we find is a truth beyond what an individual can "figure out". We become greater than any self image, and wiser than any fixed dogma frozen in language. We discover a field of knowing, a bliss where all thinking ends, all separation ends, all suffering ends.

We can now see clearly that it has never been otherwise. The only difference is that now everything has its own meaning, and we don't have to carry anything again! Most of us pay a big price by looking under the street lamp! Most just read another book.

Be a lamp to yourself.Be your own confidence.Hold the truth within yourself, as tothe only truth. - Buddha

For the ordinary man, whose mind is a checkerboard of crisscrossing reflections, opinions, and prejudices, bare attention is virtually impossible; his life is thus centered not in reality itselfbut in his ideasof it. By focusing the mind wholly on each object and every action, zazen strips it of extraneous thoughts and allows us to enter into a full rapport with life.